Giles Rowbotham Email & Phone Number

London, Us

The Queen's Club is the world's oldest multi-purpose sports club and home of the Fever-Tree lawn tennis championships. Since 2007 the Club has been owned by its members and its operations overseen by an elected board of directors and committees. I sit on the Membership Committee, whose purpose is to manage and advise the board on all membership-related issues, including member recruitment. Since joining the committee I have taken on responsibility for a project developing a new category of junior membership in order to improve access to the club for people under 22.

I am a non-executive director of Wananchi Group. As well as sitting on the main board of directors I also sit on the HR committee.Wananchi Group is a leading East African telecoms operator headquartered in Mauritius and offering broadband, fixed line pay TV and satellite pay TV as well as B2B services.

London, Gb

I am a senior lawyer in one of the world's largest mobile telecoms, broadband and pay TV groups operating across Europe with over 20,000 employees. Liberty Global is a dynamic, entrepreneurial, high intensity organisation with a high tolerance for risk.I manage a team responsible for a range of corporate activity across the group (M&A, joint ventures, infrastructure financing and VC investments), telecoms wholesale arrangements, UK company secretarial and corporate governance matters, with 5 direct reports. In 2020 our team was awarded Global In-house Legal Team of the year by The Lawyer.Highlights of my role include:• Joint ventures: Leading the legal workstreams on the creation, integration and ongoing management and governance of the £31 billion joint venture combination of Virgin Media and O2 in the UK and the €20 billion joint venture of Ziggo and Vodafone in the Netherlands.• M&A/business separation: Leading the legal workstreams on the €19 billion disposal of LG’s businesses in Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania to Vodafone. The disposal was a significant strategic move, being the sale of approximately one third of Liberty Global’s business, and represented a highly complex business separation project. Following the transaction, we restructured Liberty Global’s organisational model from a matrix to devolved set up.• Infrastructure: Key member of the project team and leading the legal workstreams on the creation of a £4.3 billion business to roll out fibre telecoms network in the UK for wholesale to 3rd parties, as well as other fibre, telecoms towers and other infra projects.• Start-up ventures: Key member of the team involved in creating AtlasEdge, a start-up venture in edge data centre hosting and connectivity across Europe. • Company secretarial: Designing and leading the reorganisation of the UK company secretarial function to achieve cost savings and process improvements.

London, England, Gb

I had the role as a leading corporate senior associate with experience of leading, managing and advising on a wide range of high profile and complicated projects, including M&A, equity capital markets, corporate governance and commercial transactions.M&A highlights• Advising Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer, on its £78.4bn acquisition of SABMiller plc, the world’s second largest brewer. The largest ever UK public takeover and one of the most complicated M&A deals of all time. • Advising Liberty Global on its €19bn joint venture with Vodafone in the Netherlands and its acquisition of a 9.9% interest in ITV plc.• Advising RELX Group on a large number of technology, software and publishing acquisitions and disposals, including the acquisitions of MLex, Jordan Publishing, Mendeley, Tracesmart and Wunelli. • Advising Invensys plc on its £1.7bn disposal of its rail business to Siemens followed by its £3.4bn public takeover by Schneider Electric.• Advising Nordic Capital on its €10bn sale of Nycomed to Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Capital markets highlights• Advising Henderson Equity Partners and John Laing on its £715m London Stock Exchange IPO following a dual track sale process. • Advising BP on its >$500m disposal of part of its stake in Castrol India (through two tranche market placings). Corporate governance and general advisory highlights• Advising RELX Group plc, Kingfisher plc and Laird plc on a range of listed company corporate governance matters (including AGM process, share buybacks, MAR, Listing Rules and general disclosure obligations).• Advising Econet on the settlement of its longstanding Bharti Airtel litigation in Nigeria.

London, England, Gb

In 2012 I was seconded from Freshfields to the M&A team at BP plc to support the business’s divestment programme in the wake of the Macondo spill. I was the lead internal lawyer on the divestment of the downstream LPG business across several jurisdictions, as well as several other business and asset disposals. The experience was an invaluable insight into the role of inhouse counsel and the interaction between the legal function and other central functions of a large corporation (such as finance, treasury, tax, investor relations, HR etc) as well as the business. I also gained experience in the management of external counsel, both in terms of advice and service delivery to the business but also in terms of budget and cost management.

Between 2008-2010 I spent two years working in a non-legal role as Managing Director of Fox’s Marina & Boatyard, a diversified SME in the marine industry, where I reported to the Chairman and sole shareholder (who was previously a client at Allen & Overy). • This role gave me fantastic leadership experience through being responsible for nine direct reports and a wider workforce of around 60 employees. I also developed financial skills, managing an annual turnover of £5 million per annum and working with monthly management accounts and budgets. These skills set me apart from other lawyers at my level.• Particular achievements include overseeing separation from larger ex-parent company, managing the business through a recession, establishing a forward-looking plan to reorganise the business, introducing operational improvements (particularly to improve cash flow) and obtaining government funding for business improvement and training schemes.

London, Gb

I started my legal career at Allen & Overy in March 2004. I trained in the Project Finance, Litigation, Real Estate, and Corporate teams in the London office and spent a six month secondment to A&O's Amsterdam office.I qualified as a solicitor in March 2006 into the Corporate department of the London office. I worked on a range of M&A transactions including joint ventures and real estate financings. For clients ranging from private equity houses and investment banks to PLCs and individuals.

Bachelor Of Arts - Ba, French And Italian

Legal Practice Course, Law

Post-Graduate Diploma In Law, Law

A Levels In French, Geography And Physics - Each At A Grade